Showing results by author "Ken Schenck" in All Categories

What if we could read the Devil's letters? What if we could hear two devils plotting to turn America into pure chaos and devastation—and found out their job was almost too easy? This book is a satirical, razor-sharp tour through the spiritual and political chaos of our current moment—told from the gleefully malicious perspective of two demons studying America like hunters tracking wounded prey. In a series of biting letters, Grimclaw and Festerling dissect the nation’s fractures, exploit its fears, and lay out their strategies for deepening division, distorting faith, and turning ...

There is this rumor going around that the idea of women in ministry and leadership isn't biblical. Quite to the contrary, women play all the same roles in Scripture as men save one - and Jesus is the only one who has truly fulfilled that one. Join me on a whirlwind tour through Scripture as we meet Deborah the judge, prophetess, and supreme leader of Israel. We'll meet Huldah, whom the high priest needed to sort out Scripture for him. We'll meet Priscilla who discipled Apollos, Junia the apostle of Jesus, and Phoebe the deacon of the church at Cenchrea. We'll also learn that Paul, far from ...

Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology is widely influential. It is well laid out, easy to understand, and has components that make working through it a spiritual experience. The problem is that it is wrong at a number of fundamental points. This is the first of seven e-booklets summarizing and evaluating Grudem's theology. This first e-booklet evaluates his theology of Scripture, whose underlying problem is that it is riddled with anachronistic thinking. Grudem neither knows how to fully read the books of the Bible in context, nor is aware of how fundamentalist Reformed influences have skewed ...

Throughout Christian history, the forty days before Easter have been set apart as a time of self-reflection and preparation for the sufferings of Christ. This book walks through those forty days with you, examining a different passage from Mark's Passion narrative each day. On Sundays, we turn our attention more directly to the hope of Easter and the promise of resurrection, for each Sunday is an Easter in miniature. Each entry begins with a brief meditation and then moves carefully through the text itself, inviting you to understand more deeply the story that leads to the cross and the ...

If you are a teacher, you know the drill. Students can now generate most traditional assignments simply by copying and pasting our instructions into their AI of choice. Our first impulse has been to catch these mindless papers. But our detectors are probabilistic, not certain. And more and more AI-generated work will escape detection. In the end, policing alone is not a winning strategy. In Teaching in the Age of AI, after a little commiseration over our current pains, we shift our thinking to the future. The first question is how to re-imagine the forms our assignments take so that ...

Walk down the typical city street in America and you will see church after church, all with different beliefs. What is even more intriguing is the fact that most of them claim to get their beliefs from the Bible. Who decides which interpretation is right In this book, Ken Schenck explores why Christians believe so many different things about the Bible and suggests the best way for Christians to use the Bible with integrity.

Concerned about what is happening in America, I did a sweep through the last 250 years of our history with a view to the present. What I found was that every era of American history is shouting to us, warning us that we are headed in the wrong direction. The Founding Fathers insisted on a Bill of Rights, which is currently being thrown out the window. People are abducted without warrant or trial to concentration camps. The Founders protested autocracy, yet the current administration has shut down independent checks and balances. We have a rogue Supreme Court throwing century-long precedents...

Those who believe God is loving and good have always wrestled with the question of why he allows evil and suffering to continue in the world. This book goes through the various issues and options, processing these questions and the best suggestions for answers. The best answers are that evil exists because of the freedom God has given us as free moral agents and that this often results in suffering. Meanwhile, God often allows suffering so that we can grow in character. In the end, we must have faith in God's goodness despite our lack of full understanding.

This series of readings is based on my Explanatory Notes on Jesus' Birth. However, in this book, the notes are formatted in terms of the 31 days of December. The book thus provides a path through the birth stories of Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2 during Advent and the days immediately following Christmas. Each verse is followed by notes explaining the biblical text.

Who is this Jesus? Who is this man who came out of nowhere in the nowhere of the north? Rumors started to whisper about healings. A new power over demons was rising from the villages by the sea. He came for those everyone else overlooked. He restored those who had fallen out of sight – the blind, the sick, the needy, the widows, the demon-possessed. He preached a great reversal. Those who mourned now would laugh when the kingdom came to earth as it is in heaven. Those who hungered now would be well-fed then. Those who were rich and powerful now would be brought down, and the humble would ...

In the late 1800s, a certain view of the end times became very popular in America. Ideas like the rapture, the Tribulation, and the Antichrist made their way into the popular imagination of the church and beyond. Movies, novels, and countless books have been made assuming this set of biblical interpretations. Without knowing any other possibilities, many came to assume that the world would inevitably get worse and worse until finally Christ would swoop in to rescue some and then later finish off the destruction of the rest. In this book, we look at the key biblical passages to see if these ...

A veces se escucha que no es bíblico que las mujeres estén en el ministerio y en el liderazgo. Muy por el contrario, las mujeres desempeñan en las Escrituras los mismos roles que los hombres, excepto uno, y Jesús es el único que verdaderamente lo ha cumplido. Únase a mí en un recorrido por las Escrituras mientras conocemos a Débora, la jueza, profetisa y líder suprema de Israel. Nos encontraremos con Hulda, a quien el sumo sacerdote necesitaba para ordenarle las Escrituras. Nos encontraremos con Priscila, quien instruyó a Apolos en la fe, Junia, la apóstol de Jesús, y Febe, ...

What do Christians actually believe about God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit? Does God know what I'm thinking? Has God already decided the future for me? Did Jesus' body do all the things that our bodies do? Does he still have a body now? Is the Holy Spirit a person? Can I stop sinning? What does a real church look like? What's the right way to baptize or have communion? How does God want me to live? This book gives 100 core answers that Christians throughout the centuries have given to basic questions about God. It not only includes answers that Christians have pretty much agreed ...

In the first installment of his diary, the archangel Gabriel shared his reflections on Jesus' incarnation as a child. In this second volume, he shares the story of Jesus' earthly ministry, death, and resurrection.

It is common to speak of the attributes or characteristics of God. This book picks ten key characteristics of God and explores them both biblically and theologically. God is mystery, love, power, knowledge, presence, Immanuel, good, parent, justice, and savior.

In the spirit of John Wesley's Explanatory Notes on the New Testament, Ken Schenck translates Galatians verse by verse and gives general insights into the original meaning and connotations of this central letter of Paul. The explanatory notes incorporate expert debates over Galatians without the footnotes.

In the spirit of John Wesley's Explanatory Notes on the New Testament, Ken Schenck translates 1 and 2 Thessalonians verse by verse. The book gives general insights into the original meaning of Paul's earliest letter, as well as plenty of speculation about the setting of Paul's most mysterious letter.

Gabriel is the arch-angel God uses more than any other to communicate with the universe. In this first of several entries into his diary, Gabriel recounts the coming of the Logos to the Earth as Jesus the Christ.

This book is part of a number of "Explanatory Notes" I have published on the New Testament. This one looks at the birth stories in Matthew and Luke, as well as the Prologue in the Gospel of John. We go verse by verse through the biblical text, with a special view to the original meaning, but also to theological and practical significance.

We are at war. It is a spiritual war. People are involved, but the fight is not as much against people as against human selfishness and the oppression that comes as a result. God has given us a choice, and God has given us a charge. We are all Adam and Eve. What are we going to choose? Are we going to live for something much greater than ourselves? Are we going to live for God by living for others? Are we going to rise to the challenge of the world set before us and make the world a much better place or look for some lifeboat where we can wait for God to rescue us? You decide.